The association has denied withholding grant funding, adding the pair “volunteered” to pay coaching staff and said there were “inconsistencies” in their statements.

Kitsui, 46, who won gold at the Asian Bench Press Championships in 2014 and is a former world no 2, has said the governing body kept more than HK$200,000 of the Sports Aid Grant awarded to him.

The grant is given by the Hong Kong Sports Institute (HKSI) to elite athletes who are not supported under Tier A sports or the Individual Athletes Support Scheme (IASS).

But while the institute says the grant is for athletes and not their associations, money is handed over to governing bodies to pass on, rather than to sportsmen and women directly.

Kitsui received the grant for six years between 2014 to 2021. Fong, 44, who has seven Hong Kong powerlifting records to his name, received the grant from 2019 to 2022, and claimed the association asked him to pay HK$1.03 million in coaching fees.

According to the association, Kitsui was suspended in 2022 over the misuse of the grant. Fong also left in a similar fashion.

Kitsui, who quit the association last November, said making his complaints public were not about the money but about wanting to “make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else”.

Only association members can represent Hong Kong at international competitions in powerlifting and weightlifting.

“This association has messed it all up and it’s a living hell for weightlifters and powerlifters,” Ho said. “These are world-class athletes and they are getting zero recognition because of this.”

Powerlifting requires athletes to lift as heavy a weight as possible across three main lifts: squat, dead lift and bench press. Weightlifting is an Olympic sport and has only two lifts: snatch, and clean and jerk.

Ho, who is also a keen weightlifter, accused the association of neglecting weightlifting as a sport and highlighted the lack of competitions in the city.

The association’s own website suggests there has only ever been one national weightlifting competition in Hong Kong, held in 2019.

However, last week, it announced that a tournament would go ahead later this month.

“Our proposal to the LCSD [Leisure and Cultural Services Department] is a yearly weightlifting championship event,” Dr Josephine Ip Wing-yuk, the association’s chairwoman, said.

Ip said there had been no weightlifting competitions between 2020 and 2023 because of Covid-19 restrictions, but did not address why none had taken place in the years before 2019.

Weightlifters in Hong Kong told the Post that, aside from 2019, they did not know of any other national weightlifting competitions in the city since at least 2010.

According to the sport’s world governing body, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), its members must organise national championships annually.

“I am going to write a letter to the IWF to highlight the issues around weightlifting in Hong Kong,” Ho said. “We need to bring attention and awareness to the issue until the government steps in to regulate.”

The association is also responsible for cultivating athletes from powerlifting and weightlifting to represent the city at international level.

Although Hong Kong has produced world-class powerlifters, it has sent only one professional weightlifter to an international competition since 2012.

In comparison, Team Singapore has six weightlifters listed as athletes on its website and the Singapore Weightlifting Federation has 17 national athletes.

“I want better management from the Hong Kong government to force organisations to properly promote sports,” Ho said. “The actions by the HKWPA are hindering the development of weightlifting and powerlifting.”